I thought this discussion on the SRS yahoo list was interesting enough to make into its own blog posting.
A question about ‘discernment’ and a damn fine answer from Tim.
The original posting:
Sexual attraction is shaped conciously by our mind through experience, preference and social conditioning of what is sexually desirable, but sexual magnetism is driven by chemical secretions generated from the frontal lobe cortex which controls sexual arousal and sexuality. Therefore sexual racism can not exist. There is only sexual discernment, which we are all entitled to. Sexual discernment is evident when our preferences (i.e. “I like waxed arses”) are motivated by sexual practices (i.e. “I like waxed arses because I love to rim”). There is a rational thought process that links physical attraction with certain sex acts. That’s fine.
But racism only occurs when sexual attraction is only aroused through misheld beliefs and stereotypes (i.e. “I only have sex with Asian/hispanic men because they have smooth arses and I love to rim.” OR “I don’t have sex with Asians because I’m a bottom boy and nips have little dicks.”) Which, of course, is not necessarily true. It is ignorant to exclude a race out of false beliefs – ” I am not attracted to Asian men because they are effeminate and bottom”. But this isn’t sexual racism, it’s just racism. Period. You can’t train your synaptic nerve response in your cerebral cortex to force yourself to be sexually attracted to a certain racial group… Funnily enough, most racism felt by young Asian men in the gay community comes from Asians themselves. Asian men who have ‘white’ lovers or life partners feel superior to Asian men without Anglo lovers or friends. These Asian men use ‘white’ Australian lovers as a status symbol to boost their sexual desireability amoungst members of their own race or cultural group. At the end of the day, nobody is going to have sex with people they are not attracted to. I am not going to have sex with an Asian guy based on the philosophy of multicultural inclusion just to improve the Asian mans’ self-esteem. I don’t sleep with men out of pity.
A response from timster:
Hi,
Thanks for the opportunity to rebut a bunch of ideas that I’ve been thinking about for a while. A bunch of what you’ve said is superficially sensible, but I think you’re operating on a set of mistaken assumptions which I’d like to tease apart.
In fact, proposition by proposition. Let’s go!
Sexual attraction is shaped conciously by our mind through experience, preference and social conditioning of what is sexually desirable,
Sure, yep. With you so far.
> but sexual magnetism is driven by chemical secretions generated from the frontal lobe cortex which controls sexual arousal and sexuality.
Sure. But to separate those as distinct process is to create a false dichotomy where none exists. Attraction and arousal are linked. In my view, our experience plays a role in what arouses us, unless we suffer from some kind of brain damage. Anyway, carry on…
> Therefore sexual racism can not exist. There is only sexual discernment, which we are all entitled to.
Woah, dobbin. How did we get there? There's a few missing steps in that argument. Because I'm a sweetheart, I'm going to let you carry on and assume that you'll pick up the point in a while...
Oh, hang on. Yes, we are all entitled to sexual discernment. Otherwise we’d be having sex with *everyone* and what kind of world would that be?! Hmm.
> Sexual discernment is evident when our preferences(i.e. "I like waxed arses") are motivated by sexual practices (i.e. "I like waxed arses because I love to rim").
Weird example, but sure.
> There is a rational thought process that links physical attraction with certain sex acts. That's fine.
I think the gap I'm seeing is that a tiny amount of our thinking about sex is conscious and an even smaller amount is rational. There's a lot more that is based on "contextual conditioning", certain sensed patterns cause certain responses - this stuff is learned through exposure to an environment, but not conscious (or even consciously accessible) and certainly not rational.
Your whole argument seems to me to be about what is rational and what is silly, but it’s about what is conscious. The rest you relegate to brain chemistry (and make it therefore unalterable and unaffected by environment). But in fact, and there’s a wealth of research that agrees with me (check out Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” for a delightfully readable wander through this stuff), there’s a huge middle territory of embodied cognition that is learned (in that contextual sense), situated and alterable.
> But racism only occurs when sexual attraction is only aroused through misheld beliefs and stereotypes (i.e. "I only have sex with Asian/hispanic men because they have smooth arses and I love to rim." OR "I don't have sex with Asians because I'm a bottom boy and nips have little dicks.") Which, of course, is not necessarily true.
Let me rephrase what you said to what I want you to say: "A person can only be *called* a racist, when sexual attraction is only aroused through misheld beliefs and stereotypes". I can agree with that. Calling someone a racist is a tough call.
But, as the members of this group have slowly led me to grasp, racism is experienced in situations with no actual racist present. Racism can be systemic, or cultural or inadvertent. From the point-of-view of the person subject to it, it doesn’t matter a damn. Racism can quite happily “occur” in a situation between two people with no actual racist in the room. Eerie, but true.
> It is ignorant to exclude a race out of false beliefs - " I am not attracted to Asian men because they are effeminate and bottom". But this isn't sexual racism, it's just racism. Period.
Silly terminology issue. I use "sexual racism" to refer to situations where racism occurs in a sexually intimate or romantic situation. Yes, it's racism, it's also sexual racism. Period.
> You can't train your synaptic nerve response in your cerebral cortex to force yourself to be sexually attracted to a certain racial group...
I’ve had lots of email from and conversations with men who have, through environmental or experiential circumstances, found that their sexual taste broadening from just a focus on their own ethnic group to gradually encompass men from other places. Sometimes, guys who’veÂtravelled suddenly “noticed” that Asian guys (for instance) were hot,Âoften by travelling to somewhere like Cambodia or Vietnam. Then theyÂreturn home and suddenly there’s all these new faces on the streets — who’d been there all the time…
I have no idea if they’re training their “synaptic nerve response” or not, all I know is that desire is something which can grow to encompass a greater range. It seems to me that this situation is preferable and healthy.
> Funnily enough, most racism felt by young Asian men in the gay community comes from Asians themselves. Asian men who have 'white' lovers or life partners feel superior to Asian men without Anglo lovers or friends. These Asian men use 'white' Australian lovers as a status symbol to boost their sexual desireability amongst members of their own race or cultural group.
Wow. That's one of those amazingly clueless generalisations I've heard people made but never actually saw. Thanks for expanding my experience.
I’m sure you’re making that statement based on actual situations you’ve seen or had related to you, and I’m not denying such situations occur or that racism against a group of people can certainly happen within that group as well as without it. But, how you can have the gall to observe that “*most* racism felt by young Asian men” is… well, anything you reckon really without being inside that experience or spending a lot of time very carefully studying it is… brave and amazingly insensitive, frankly.
From what I hear, racism against Asian folk in Australia is alive and well both in the broader community and in the gay community and it manifests in lots of ways both overt and subtle, personal and systemic and cultural, deliberate and inadvertent. To dismiss the reality of that experience as irrelevant and claim that racism is primarily perpetrated by Asian men on Asian men might give you comfort, but it does little to change the reality of people’s actual lives for the better.
At the end of the day, nobody is going to have sex with people they are not attracted to. I am not going to have sex with an Asian guy based on the philosophy of multicultural inclusion just to improve the Asian mans' self-esteem. I don't sleep with men out of pity.
I can see how you might infer that that's our position from what's written on the campaign web page, but that's not what we're saying. That you can get here from there reinforces an opinion that's been slowly forming in my head that the page needs an update to include more of the points of view on this list and broader argument about racism in sexual life and the gay community.
A fact that I think your post neatly illustrates.
Anyone else care to hop in for a go?
Regards
Tim
(October 2005)
Sexual Racism Sux 